Sagging Sophomore Strathcona

I know you probably think you are not gonna slump. I definitely didn’t think I would, because my freshman year was ~ePiC~. I felt like the hottest boy in the hood at the end of freshman year — everyone loved me and I loved everyone and I was just so important. The Ying Yang Twins played Spring Fling; while I twerked, I whistled.

There was no way I was gonna come back to New Haven in the fall and find anything but magic.

Then I got back to school in the fall and the magic was kind of gone. Not at first, anyway. I did O.K. for the first few weeks, and I met new people, and kind of felt like a hot commodity because in effect I was still a freshman, because the freshmen were too drunk to count. But come October things started to get saggy. Suddenly doing YDN was hard, and people got mad at me for things. I realized the freshman 15 was real, and people I liked weren’t interested in me anymore. I stopped seeing, like, half of my friends, and stopped liking the friends I did see.

There was hair where there had never been hair before.

Over time, I grew so jaded that I started listening to Taylor Swift literally at all times to keep myself sane. Nothing against Taylor Swift — seriously, girl knows her shit — but I think that’s one of the Warning Signs.

There are numerous Warning Signs that your Yale is sagging, which I will list below. When you start doing these things, you know you’re slumpin’. Some of them aren’t really so bad, and are actually a lot better than freshman things like telling all your friends about this awesome thing called the Cheese Truck, or feeling like hot shit for hooking up with a Whiffenpoof. So get ready, y’all. It’s goin’ to be a wild ride.

1) You start working exclusively in your bed. Sometimes it’s too hard to go to the library, or you just don’t want to see that one person, or whatever. Bed is way more comfortable than every other place, so do your thing. This is a no judgment zone.

2) You become a small child again. This can manifest itself in many ways. Taylor Swift is one. Only eating nachos is another. It’s natural to resist growing up, obvi, so this isn’t one to worry about. You’ll probably do the same thing for the rest of your life.

3) You start hating the dining hall. Remember freshman year when quinoa was exciting? Neither do I, but there were sometimes foods in the dining halls that seemed tantalizing, or at least like nothing else I’d eaten (tofu parmigiana, magic bars). Now I’ve eaten them all before, and they are not interesting. Just terrible.

4) You realize every party at this school is the same. Last weekend I was ROFLing with a friend at the prospect of going to a certain off campus party. “WOW!” we LOLed, “This is going to be SO MUCH DIFFERENT than every other Yale party! There will be so many new people for me to meet, and so many interesting drunk conversations going on, and I’m just going to have a blast watching so-and-so hook up with so-and-so.” Le sigh…

5) Whiskey replaces Dubra as the vodka of choice. On Old Campus it doesn’t matter what you’re drinking as long as you’re drinking. When you’re a sophomore it’s all about whatever will make you feel like you’re feeling anything at all.

6) You start searching for transfer forms and study abroad programs. I never really did this, but I know a lot of people who did. Eventually you realize that a semester or year at Oxford is probably cooler than getting tapped for a junior society.

7) You start wishing Yale Men’s Hockey could be mediocre again. Don’t get me wrong, I love watching the hockey boiz kill it/each other on the ice, but hockey games were a lot more fun when the fairweather fans weren’t taking all my damn tickets. How many times was I shut out from games this year just cuz I didn’t make it to the bookstore by Monday afternoon? Too many.

The sophomore slump is different for everyone, and I already feel its curse breaking. This summer I’m going abroad, and I CAN’T WAIT for JuNiOr YeAr. But to freshmen and to posterity, get ready: the slump is real and is comin’ for ya.

(And when you’ve listened to Taylor Swift’s “Tim McGraw” six times in a row, I hope you think of me.)

Comments

nutella

Hahaha this is the best headline an article has ever had. Also, great article! I actually chuckled, which is more than I can say a lot of times.

dfsdfs

accurate to say the least

zhangm

this article is aces. i don’t know who you are but serious kudos and love.